Attributes & the right sidebar

Note pills & the right sidebar Since 0.13.0

A row of pills always sits at the right of the note header, above the text, whether the right sidebar is open or not:

• Who and when: avatars for the person who last edited the note and, if different, the person who created it, then how long ago it was last edited (“Edited 5m ago”, or “Not committed” for a note that has no commit yet). Hover for names. Opens Details.
• Backlinks, Tags, Attributes, Comments: an icon and a count each. A pill at zero is dimmed but still clickable. The Comments pill is tinted while the note has unresolved comments.

With the right sidebar closed, clicking a pill opens a card under it with that section:

• Details: who created and last edited the note, its path, and the latest 5 entries of its history.
• Backlinks: the notes that link here.
• Tags: the note’s tags.
• Attributes: the note’s attributes, read-only, with Edit in sidebar.
• Comments: the open threads, each with Reply, which opens the thread in the editor, and Resolve.

Every card has Open in sidebar, which opens the right sidebar on that section.

With the sidebar open, clicking a pill scrolls the sidebar to that section and expands it.

Open and close the sidebar with the titlebar button or ModShift\. Click a section’s heading (the chevron) to fold or unfold it; Mahfouz remembers which sections you folded on this device.

The sidebar’s sections, in order:

• Details: Created, Created by, Updated, Last edited by and Path, then the note’s history. Created by and Last edited by are person chips: click one to open the person’s note. Since 0.15.0 These rows come from git and the file on disk, so they’re read-only; Path reveals the file in your file manager. Click a row’s label to choose whether it also shows in the attributes block in the document.
• Backlinks: see Links.
• Tags: the note’s tags; click one to search for it. Since 0.13.0
• Attributes: see Attributes panel.
• Comments: the note’s comment threads; see Track changes.

Attributes panel

Attributes Mahfouz understands get a matching control; everything else is a free-form row. Both are saved in the note’s frontmatter, so they’re visible and hand-editable outside the app too.

The panel shows in two places: as a block in the document under the note’s first heading, and as a right-sidebar section (open it from the attributes pill’s card; see Note pills).

The read-only Created, Updated and Path rows live in the sidebar’s Details section; the block in the document shows them only if you’ve chosen to there.

Rows Since 0.13.0

Every attribute is one row: its type’s icon, its name, its value, an eye and a menu.

• The type icon shows the attribute’s type (an attribute with no type shows Text’s). Click it for the list of types, the current one checked. Choosing a type changes it at once. Select…, Multi-select…, the dates and Relation… then open their next step; see Changing a type. Since 0.14.0
• The eye says whether the attribute shows in the block in the document: always, only while it has a value (dashed), or never (struck through). Click it to move to the next state. The setting isn’t this note’s alone: it’s saved for every note of its database, or in the vault’s settings, and the eye’s tooltip says which (“Shown in every note in Projects”); see Where visibility is saved. Since 0.18.0
• The menu (the ⋯ button on hover) has Rename…, Change type…, Visibility and Delete. The Visibility submenu ends with where the setting is saved: “Saved in Projects (database)” or “Saved in vault settings”. Since 0.18.0 Delete changes only this note, and happens at once; its notification has Undo. Rename… of an attribute with a type renames it in every note and database, as in Settings → Attributes (it asks first); without a type, only in this note. Clearing the name keeps the old one.
• + Add attribute adds a row and puts you in its name. Press Enter to go to its value, or Esc to drop the row. Click the new row’s type icon to choose its type first: it’s set when you keep the name. A name the vault already types keeps that type. An attribute added in the document shows there while it has a value, unless its database or the vault already says otherwise. Since 0.18.0

In the document, the eye and the menu show when you hover a row, and a row you’re editing stays until you leave it, even if you clear a value that’s only shown while filled. A note with nothing to show has no block: add its first attribute from the right sidebar’s Attributes panel.

A Select shows its value as a colored pill; click it to pick another option or Clear.

• Render external images: a switch; see Media.
• Orientation: Landscape / Portrait segmented control for PDF export (same as the toolbar button). Landscape is the default and writes no key.
• Text, highlight, background color: a color swatch each, with a clear button once set (same as the toolbar color menu). These and Font also style the note’s published page.
• A free-form key/value table for anything else. A recognized key with a value its control can’t show (say orientation: sideways) stays in the table so you can fix it.

Where visibility is saved Since 0.18.0

Visibility belongs to an attribute’s name, not to one note, so notes that belong together look alike:

• A note inside a database, a row or any note under a row at any depth, follows that database. The setting is in the database’s block, as visibility under the attribute in properties (the column menu’s Show column sets it). A database inside a row decides its own attributes, and the outer database the rest.
• Any other note, and an attribute no database above the note sets, follows the vault: visibility: under the attribute’s heading in .config/attributes.md, the Visibility column of Settings → Attributes.
• An attribute set nowhere is hidden.

Each setting is show, filled (shown while it has a value) or hidden. Moving a note into, out of or between databases changes what it shows, without changing any file.

Earlier versions kept visibility in the note itself, on the attribute’s name (author!: … always shown, author?: … shown while filled). When Mahfouz opens a vault that still has those, it moves them into these settings once, in one commit, chore: move attribute visibility to settings: for each attribute, the choice most notes of a database (or of the rest of the vault) had wins, and every note is left with plain names.

Lists Since 0.12.0

An attribute can hold a list of values, such as Obsidian’s tags or aliases. Mahfouz reads a list written either of these two ways:

tags:
  - reading
  - fiction
aliases: ["J. Smith", "Smith, John"]

Other shapes, such as a list of mappings or a nested list, show as empty in the app but are kept in the file as you wrote them.

In the panel, a list on an attribute with no type, or a Text attribute, shows as chips:

• Click × on a chip to remove that item.
• Type in Add… and press Enter to add an item. Press Backspace in an empty Add… to remove the last item.
• In the tags attribute, Add tag opens a list of the vault’s tags instead, with a search field, your Recent tags and All tags. Click a tag (or press Enter) to add it, again to remove it; the list stays open for more. Type a new tag and choose Create #tag to add one no note has yet. See Suggested tags. Since 0.14.0

A Multiselect attribute keeps its own option chips. In a database, a list shows as read-only pills, and editing the cell opens the same chips.

Mahfouz leaves a list as you wrote it until you change it. Once you edit a list in the app, it’s written on one line, as ["reading", "fiction"]. Text you type into an ordinary attribute stays text, even when it looks like a list.

Mahfouz doesn’t keep these when it saves a note’s frontmatter: comments, blank lines between keys, the order of keys, and multi-line values written with | or >. Edit those notes in another editor if you need them kept.

Changing a type Since 0.14.0

Click an attribute’s type icon (or its column’s, in a database, or Set type… in the column’s menu) to change its type. A type that needs nothing else is set with one click. A few open a next step in the menu’s place, with ← to go back to the types and no Save: the type is set at once, and every change in the step applies as you make it.

• Select… and Multi-select…: the options (below), then Show as: Menu, Buttons or Radio for a Select; Chips or Checkboxes for a Multi-select. A Select or Multi-select can have no options yet; in a database you can add them from a cell.
• Date and Date & time: Show as Date or Relative, and a format: YYYY-MM-DD, DD MMM YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY (Date & time adds HH:mm), each shown with an example, or Custom… to type your own (the same field as a Date field’s; text in square brackets is kept as written Since 0.20.0).
• Relation… (a database column): see Create a relation.

Select options Since 0.13.0

A Select or Multi-select attribute picks from a list of options. Edit them in the type’s step (see Changing a type) or in Vault Settings → Attributes.

• Type in Type an option, Enter to add and press Enter to add one; the field stays open so you can type the next. Pasting several lines adds one option per line. Each new option takes the next unused color. An option can’t contain a comma, and two options can’t have the same name. Since 0.14.0
• Click an option to open it: Since 0.14.0
  • Change its name to rename it. The rename applies when you press Enter or leave the field. If notes use the option, Mahfouz asks once, then renames it everywhere: in every note that uses it and in every database filter that compares the attribute with it, as one commit.
  • Pick one of the 8 colors.
  • Delete removes it. Notes that already use it keep their value as text; if any do, Mahfouz asks first and says how many.
• Drag an option to reorder it, or press Alt↑ or Alt↓ on it. Since 0.14.0

Colors are saved in .config/attributes.md, as a colors: list under the attribute’s options:

### status
type: Select
options: Draft, Review, Done
colors:
- Draft: gray
- Review: yellow
- Done: green

The colors are gray, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple and pink.

Attribute types in Settings Since 0.13.0

Vault Settings → Attributes lists every attribute type in the vault: its type icon, name, its options as colored pills, its visibility, and how many notes use it. The Visibility column is the vault’s setting (Where visibility is saved); an attribute with a setting but no type is listed after the types as No type. Since 0.18.0 Click a row’s type icon to pick another type, and the new row’s icon to choose its type before Add. Click the arrow at the end of a row to open it:

• Options uses the same option editor as the type menu’s Select…, and changes apply as you make them. Since 0.14.0
• Display picks how the control looks: Menu, Buttons or Radio for a Select; Chips or Checkboxes for a Multi-select; Date or Relative for a date. Since 0.14.0 Format sets a fixed date’s format, such as DD/MM/YYYY. It takes the same codes as a Date field, month and weekday names (MMMM, MMM, dddd, ddd, in English) and the ISO week (ww) and week-year (GGGG) included, so dddd, DD MMMM YYYY reads Wednesday, 09 December 2026. Since 0.13.0
• Rename… renames the attribute in every note that has it and in every database view that uses it, as one commit, rollups reading it included. A Relation is renamed from its database column instead. Keys Mahfouz reads itself (below, and page settings such as description, icon or page_theme) can’t be renamed, from or to. Renaming onto a name that already has a type, or a column a database already has, is refused rather than merged. If a rename stops partway, run it again to finish it.
• Delete removes the type. Notes keep their values, as text.

+ Add attribute adds a type: give it a name and a type and press Enter. A Select or Multi-select opens so you can add its options.

Names Mahfouz keeps for itself

Some frontmatter keys hold Mahfouz’s own settings, so an attribute can’t use them the same way:

• id, title, created, updated, bookmarked, renamed, parent and external_images are always Mahfouz’s. Name your attribute something else.
• database, auto_publish, publish_children, no_publish and published are Mahfouz’s only for certain values: true for the first four, and a published page’s id for published. An attribute with one of these names can’t hold those values: it would be written the same way as Mahfouz’s own setting, so give it another name. Since 0.18.0 Other values are fine, so a Jekyll or Hugo published: false stays your attribute.
• An attribute name can’t end in ! or ?. Since 0.18.0

An attribute’s value, or each item of a list, has to fit on one line.

When a change would break one of these rules, Mahfouz doesn’t save it and says why. In the free-form table, the other rows still save, and the row it refused stays as you typed it so you can fix it.